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Nefarian
Nefarian, son of Deathwing, is the leader of the Black Dragonflight. In his human guise, he is known as Victor Nefarius, Lord of Blackrock. Holding the Blackrock Clan and various clans of ogres under his dominion, Nefarian rules from his lair at the top of Blackrock Spire. =General Information= *Level: Boss *Location: Blackwing Lair in Blackrock Mountain *Type: Dragonkin =Background= Nefarian is an end-game dungeon boss in World of Warcraft, located atop Blackwing Lair after Chromaggus. He has two forms: his Human form, Lord Victor Nefarius, and his dragon form, Nefarian proper. Nefarian is an extremely difficult encounter as it requires a full 40-man raid to win along with strong coordination and leadership. On average, the full encounter consists of 3 stages and takes about 20-30 minutes to finish. Up until the introduction of the 40-man Temple of Ahn'Qiraj instance in early 2006, Nefarian was considered by most players to be one of the most difficult of all boss encounters. "Downing" Nefarian is still a significant achievement for guilds pursuing end-game content. Lore thumb|Nefarian's human form, Lord Victor Nefarius The Black Dragonflight was among the greatest threats to mortal life the world has ever known, and currently resides in Blackwing Lair. Led by the fallen Aspect, Deathwing, the black dragons ravaged and subverted the kingdoms of humanity and elves for generations. Yet, during the Battle of Grim Batol (nearly fifteen years ago), Deathwing was defeated by his fellow Aspects and thought destroyed. Though some believe the great leviathan is merely hiding in seclusion, it is clear he has no direct control over his diabolical flight. Since Deathwing's departure, his eldest children have arisen to lead their brethren and recoup their failing numbers. Deathwing's eldest son, the malicious and cunning Nefarian, has claimed the burning fortress of Blackrock Spire as his aerie. There, aided by his loyal Dragonspawn, he fights a constant battle with Ragnaros and his forces for control of the mountain, and ultimately control of the entire region. Nefarian has vowed to crush Ragnaros. To this end, he has recently begun efforts to bolster his forces, much as his father Deathwing had attempted to do in ages past. However, where Deathwing failed, it now seems the scheming Nefarian may be succeeding. Nefarian's mad bid for dominance has even attracted the ire of the Red Dragonflight, which has always been the Black Flight's greatest foe. Though Nefarian's intentions are known, the methods he is using to achieve them remain a mystery. It is believed, however that Nefarian has been experimenting with the blood of all of the various Dragon Flights to create a chromatic Dragonflight as unstoppable warriors. One of Nefarian's mightiest supporters is his younger sister, Onyxia. A clever, highly intelligent dragon, Onyxia is fond of assuming mortal guises, which she uses to secretly manipulate the affairs of mortal politics and commerce. His human form, Victor Nefarius, has struck up an alliance with Rend Blackhand, though he only uses him and his clan to further his own goals. The red dragon Vaelastrasz has sworn to hunt Nefarian until the end of his days. =Strategies= Phase 1 To activate the Encounter a person must walk up to Nefarian's throne and talk through what he says. Upon completion of this he says "Let the Games begin." From here, Nefarian is invulnerable, and walks amid the raid randomly shadow bolting, mind controlling people and casting fear on random targets. The room begins to flood with Drakonids at the same time. Phase 1 of the fight consists of defeating the drakonids. There are 6 types of drakonids that spawn. In every Nefarian encounter you will fight Chromatic Drakonids; the largest and toughest drakonids. Fortunately they spawn in far fewer number than the other color. In addition to the Chromatic Drakonid, 2 other random colors of Drakonids will spawn as well. One color will spawn from the southern door, and one color will spawn from the northern door. Colors are fixed for each instance: if Nefarian is attempted multiple times before the instance resets, the same color combinations will appear. Different colors of Drakonids have different special abilities and are resistant to different schools of magic. Note that, unlike some other Blackwing Lair mobs, these Drakonids are not particularly vulnerable to any magic. Below is a list of their colors and associated abilities / resistances: * Red Drakonids - Short range cone DoT fire attack, stacks; resistant to Fire * Blue Drakonids - Attack which drains mana; resistant to Frost; slightly resistant to Arcane; Lowers attack speed * Green Drakonids - Stun, resistant to Nature * Black Drakonids - Moderately powerful direct damage fire attack; resistant to Shadow and Fire * Bronze Drakonids - Reduces Attack and Cast Speed; resistant to Arcane The Drakonids can be killed by either AoE attacks or direct damage and aside from Chromatics, they do not hit very hard and do not have a lot of health. Doorway Method The most common strategy is to split the raid into two groups, one for each door. The groups are DPS, and AOE. All the Mages, Warlocks, Paladins/Shamans are in the AOE group; Rogues and Hunters in the DPS. Druids and Priests are split evenly between the two. Each side should have 3 Warriors, who are on a rotation. They should be using their Taunts to keep hold of the mobs, one after the other. 2 Feral Druids should be stationed one either side of the main group. Any leaks due to missed Taunts, or resistance, are picked up by these and taken back to the doorway. Setup for the Healers and AOE should be halfway between both doors. Most guilds use the long beam as the reference point. Some colours are obviously better suited to the one group over the other, whilst some can be dealt with by either. The main rules when setting up are: *'ALWAYS' AOE the Red Drakonid group. (Warlocks DoT with Corruption/CoA then Shadowbolt.) *'ALWAYS' DPS the Blue Drakonid group. *'DPS' is preferred on Black Drakonid groups, unless you get Black/Blue. *'AOE' is preferred on Bronze Drakonid groups, unless you get Red/Bronze. *'Green Drakonid' groups are governed by the other colour that appears with them. Should you get Black/Blue, the Warlocks move to the DPS side. They are ineffective against Black Drakonids, since they are resistant to all their best attacks. For Red/Bronze, AOE on the red, and dps on the bronze with healing & consumables. For Green, AOE and DPS works on them, so use whatever is available after taking care of the other color. Battle Shout Method Have the entire raid sitting on the throne platform. One warrior stands in a designated AoE spot (away from the platform) and spams Battle Shout on his group. This keeps most of the drakonids aggro'd on him allowing nonstop AoE from Mages and Warlocks. Meanwhile rogues and warriors are lined up at the bottom of the platform intercepting and assist-training anything that gets loose from the AoE spot. An additional warrior should pull chromatic drakonids out of the group (although can keep them in the AOE depending on which types you get) for rogues and hunters to focus-fire them. If the warrior keeps hitting his whole party with battleshout constantly throughout phase 1 he should never lose aggro. This strategy works consistently on all combinations and colors of Drakonids. The only adaptations that need to be made are for Green Drakonids (task a Priest to Dispelling) and Blue Drakonids (melee is more engaged). If your tanks are having difficulty holding aggro on the Drakonids it is a good idea to place them in a group with classes that have pets. This way Battle Shout will generate more aggro as it is being applied to more things. It also helps to have the Battle Shout book from AQ20, at least 3 pieces of Wrath and Improved Battle Shout. *It is said that only the rank of battleshout has an effect on the amount of aggro generated, so make sure warriors in the drakonid tank's group do not use battleshout becaue if their battleshout is better due to talents or set bonuses, the drakonid tank will not be able to cast his battleshout and will receive "a more powerful spell already in effect" message. Battle Shout Method 2 Position four or five warriors fairly close together in a diamond between the two pillars, in line of sight of the doors where the Drakonids enter. The rest of the raid stands slightly behind the warriors in a tight clump, keeping out of LOS of the doorways, but close enough for everyone to be in range for Battle Shout. Once the zerg begins, the warriors spam Battle Shout. Warriors with different ranks/talents in Battle Shout should each be placed in different groups. Mages and warlocks cast Blizzard/Rain of Fire on the tanks/drakonids. Any extra tanks and the MT for Nef should remain in the caster group and taunt any loose drakonids back to the tank formation. When Nef is about to land, the MT and his healers should get into position to pick him up. At the same time, everyone except the drakonid tanks should move to the side to avoid being hit by Nef's tail. The dps and tanks should continue to focus on the drakonids until they are all destroyed before moving into positions to dps Nefarian himself. Phase 2 After killing 42 Drakonids, no more will spawn (you still have to kill all the others that are up), and Nefarian lands on the balcony in Dragon Form. This is the beginning of Phase 2 of the encounter. Before landing he will cast an AoE (ignores LoS) Shadowflame on the entire raid. This version of the spell does about 1000 shadow damage and is completely resistable. Every member of the raid must be wearing an Onyxia Scale Cloak to avoid the fatal DoT from the Shadowflame (note: frost mages can use their Ice Block ability and paladins can use their Divine Shield ability to avoid the Flame without the cloak. Note that the trick of running up onto the Throne where he spawns to avoid this no longer works). By now most of the drakonids should be dead. Move your raid to this area and start DPSing him down, from here on out its simple damage dealing with a few twists. He has all the abilties of normal dragons: Conical breath attack (shadow based), cleave, and bellowing roar. He also does Veil of Shadow on the target nearest to the center of his hitbox. Nefarian casts an AOE fear roughly every 30 seconds. The ground shakes immediately before this occurs, giving the MT time to stance dance and use berserker rage. Alternatively, if facing Nef as the Alliance, have priests cast fear ward on the MT. Approximately every 25-35 seconds he will "call out" a specific class. During class-call outs, that class will have some negative effect on them. Below is a list of each class and the effect their call-out has on them: * Druids: **Quote: "Druids and your silly shapeshifting. Let's see it in action!" **Effect: Stuck in Cat Form for duration of the call. **Solution: Safest call is to stay back and wait for the debuff to wear off. Some raids may let the Druids run up and DPS, however this puts them at risk for getting feared into the Shadowflame and dying. Mages should get ready to decurse the Veil of Shadow off the MT. * Hunters: **Quote: "Hunters and your annoying pea-shooters!" **Effect: Equipped ranged weapon instantly broken. **Solution: Hunters should either manually unequip their bow, or set up a macro to instantly unequip. Be sure to bring extra ranged weapons in the event your bow/gun does break. * Mages: **Quote: "Mages too? You should be more careful when you play with magic..." **Effect: Cast Wild Polymorph on random raid members, Which has no range or Line of Sight (LoS) restrictions. **Solution: Mages can use Ice Block to remove this debuff, but priests (and paladins in Alliance raids) need to be ready to cleanse polymorphed players, especially tanks. Wild Polymorph has no range or line-of-sight limitations, so moving away from the raid or behind the nearby pillars is ineffective; mages can continue to DPS through this call. * Priests: **Quote: "Priests! If you're going to keep healing like that, we might as well make it a little more interesting!" **Effect: Direct Heals will subsequently DoT their target (Renew and Power Word: Shield do still work normally though). The DoT is stackable and can end up doing a lot of damage if not caught quickly. **Solution: Stop use of direct healing spells for the duration. Druids and Paladins/Shamans must compensate. * Paladins: **Quote: "Paladins, I've heard you have many lives. Show me." **Effect: Cast Blessing of Protection on Nefarian. **Solution: Paladins should cast Judgement of Wisdom on Nefarian, and all casters should wand back mana while he is protected. (It is advisable to cease damage during this call as the MT won't be able to gain more aggro. Healer heal, the rest can lean back and regenerate mana.) * Rogues: **Quote: "Rogues? Stop hiding and face me!" **Effect: Teleported and immobilized in place close to Nefarian. **Solution: In some cases Rogues will be rooted in a "safe" spot and MT adjustment is not required. If rogues do get rooted in the Cleave/Shadowflame area, the MT must turn Nefarian 45-90 degrees away from the raid to prevent rogue deaths. * Shamans: **Quote: "Shamans, show me what your totems can do!" **Effect: Give Nefarian buffed totems, including windfury, and fire nova. They seem to have modestly more health than normal totems, and they very quickly will become a veritable forest of totems. Concentrated firepower isn't needed to take down totems, but weaker melee hits won't destroy some totems in single hits. The totems, while problematic, sound worse than they are - the major issue (raid-wide) here will be DPS on Nefarian becoming nonexistant due to clean up efforts or losing someone extremely low on health due to getting hit by a fire nova pulse. The worst part about this call is the huge drain on shaman mana and mana regeneration. It is not a good idea to enter Phase 3 when these totems are up, as the Bone Constructs will recieve the buffs from the totems. **Solution: All single target DPS switch to the totems and bring them down as fast as possible. There's not much else to do besides weather the tax on shaman mana - if shaman are low on mana, waiting to drink a mana potion until AFTER their call is over may spare them a wasted potion and some totem spawns. Note: Pressing V on your keyboard (or whatever key you have set to enable enemy health bars on-screen) is very useful for this part. * Warriors: **Quote: "Warriors, I know you can hit harder than that! Let's see it!" **Effect: Stuck in Berserker Stance plus an additional 30% damage taken for duration of the call. **Solution: Extra heals for the MT. The MT also needs to make sure that Stance Sets is not enabled or he'll likely unequip his shield. At the end of the debuff Warriors must manually return to their desired stance. The raid should also watch its damage output, as the main tank will not be generating the extra threat ordinarily caused by defensive stance. * Warlocks: **Quote: "Warlocks, you shouldn't be playing with magic you don't understand. See what happens?" **Effect: 2 Infernals per Warlock are summoned. They will stun and do minor (physical?) damage to the warlock and those immediately surrounding them. **Solution: The infernals are immune to fire damage but are easily taken down by mage AoE. Assistance from Rogues and Warriors is also helpful. Warlocks, try to stand in an isolated area in the back of the raid for the duration of Phase 2 to avoid stunning healers when the Infernals come down. Having your mages stand near the Warlocks and setting up a frost Nova rotation helps to keep them contained. Phase 3 When his health reaches 20% he will resurrect all the Drakonids killed in Phase 1 as "Bone Constructs". They hit fairly hard but do not have a lot of health, so they are relatively easily AoE'd to death. It is advisable to move AoE groups into position where the Drakonids were originally killed prior to reaching 20% HP to ensure their swift elimination, and to avoid healers getting swarmed. It is also advisable to wait for an appropriate call, where you don't lose any healing. Alliance has an advantage here, as the Paladins' Holy Wrath can quickly decimate the Constructs (assuming they can afford to stop healing temporarily). Also, Paladins can shield mages from any physical attack with their blessing of protection. In addition, the Corrupted Shaman Totems from the Shaman class call will affect the adds; it is advisable to have those totems killed before the adds spawn. The advisable order of casting is: 1.) BoP for the mage 2.) Divine shield 3.) Holy wrath 4.) Stratholme water (if you brought some along). Note that if your computer isn't top of the line you will have extremely low FPS when the dragonids are ressurected, so make sure you turn your graphics down and do anything else you can to increase performance before the fight. After this he continues to cast his class debuffs up till he dies. Nefarian encounter can be reattempted any number of times, however, it takes 15 minutes for him to reset after a wipe (as of patch 1.9.3). Prior to this patch, once the battle had progressed to Phase 2, and the remaining Drakonids had all been killed, the gates would never re-open. Therefore, a Soulstone or other wipe prevention must have been in place, or the battle could not be re-attempted until the instance had reset completely. Nefarian would still respawn after 15 minutes. An alternate strategy for Phase 3 is to have all the AoE move towards the Drakonids have the entire raid (with the exception of the MT) move to one spot, the Heal Aggro alone will draw the Drakonids where Mage AoE becomes much easier and much more effective. =Quotes= "Let the games begin!" (Victor says this right before the encounter starts) "Worthless (Player)! Your friends will join you soon enough!" (when Nefarian kills a player) "Well done, my minions. The mortals' courage begins to wane! Now, let's see how they contend with the true Lord of Blackrock Spire!" (When Nefarian lands at the beginning of phase 2) "Burn, you wretches! Burn!" (Initial Shadowflame on the entire raid) "Impossible! Rise my minions! Serve your master once more!" (Summoning the skeleton zerg at the start of phase 3) "This cannot be! I am the Master here! You mortals are nothing to my kind! DO YOU HEAR? NOTHING!" (His last words) =Loot= ;Normal ;Tier 2 Chest * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (Rogue) * (Shaman) * (Warrior) * (Hunter) * (Paladin) * (Warlock) * (Mage) * (Priest) * (Druid) =External Links= *Thottbot *Allakhazam *Nefarian Video *German Tactic Link Category:Dragons Category:Bosses Category:Instance Characters Category:Instance:Blackwing Lair